"It's their Shack; they started it yesterday."
"A poor Lodge!" declared Umisk. "The first flood will undermine the corners, and down it will come. Have they no trowel-tails to round it up with good blue-clay?"
"Umisk, you should travel. Your ideas are limited. Have they not built their Shack on high ground where there will be no flood?"
"But they'll freeze in the Winter," persisted Beaver. "The water would keep them warm if they flooded it."
"They've got a stove," the Courier answered.
"What's a stove?" asked Lynx.
"You'll find out, Mister Cat, when they make bouillon of your ribs. It's that iron-thing with one long ear."
"Is that their breakfast--that pile of wood-meat?" queried Beaver.
"Yes, meat for the stove," piped Jack. "Do you think they have teeth like a wood-axe and eat bark because you do?"
"They have queer teeth, sure enough," retorted Trowel Tail. "See this tree stump, cut flat from two sides, all full of notches, as though a Kit-Beaver who didn't know his business had nibbled it down. How in the name of Good Dams they can fell trees into a stream that way I can't make out. This tree fell on land and they had to carry the logs. They're silly creatures and have much to learn."